Food Critics Give the FDA a Yellow Light

Cereal Aisle

The FDA has come out with a program to help consumers decide between good products and bad products. The Traffic Light program is supposed to help guide consumer to health food choices by using the traffic light system.

The colors of, yes, a traffic light  gives shoppers a quick burst of nutritional information. Based upon fat, saturated fat, sugars and salts a product contains, a red sticker indicates “high,” an amber sticker indicates “medium” and a green sticker indicates “low.”

The purpose of the “traffic light” is to make shopping quick and convenient while providing useful information. Now, this may seem like a great program but there are some underlying issues. First, the consumer may be choosing the product because it has a “green light” without any knowledge of what this label means.The consumer may not know that “green” means low saturated fat which defeats the purpose of the label in the first place.

The second problem is that the program is voluntary. The food industry does not have to comply with this program so you probably are not going to have a high volume of participation. If I were a food company, I would not spend millions of dollars to place a label on my product, especially, when my product may have a “red light” on the package. This is not good marketing.

The last problem is the reason for this system to be in place at all. If you need to have a label to tell you what is good or bad, you need to educate yourself better about what you are putting into your body. A food company can tell you anything but it may not be the truth. As a consumer and a human being, you have the right to research and know what processed foods are doing to you. Organic foods do not need a “traffic label” and are under strict guidelines. Even if you do not want to buy organic, you can still read the ingredients and choose the product with the least amount of chemicals.Remember, you are the consumer which means you have the power to help change this processed food industry.

Article is from SlashFood

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